• MUST. READ. A stunning 1988 essay by Joan Didion on our political “process” and its coverage in the media, and how it bears absolutely no resemblance to reality. Though I’m still trying to figure out what the hell “housemaid Spanish” is. (@citizen_kahn.)
• Why solar energy is not as green as we might like to believe. A good reason to stop air conditioning shit to death.
• “There are now more people under ‘correctional supervision’ in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height.”
• Men in trucks: The photography of Alejandro Cartagena.
• Jeff Chu on his round-the-world tour of Damien Hirst’s spots, an excellent opportunity to catch up on his reading.
• Is the theft of virtual goods considered stealing? It is by the Dutch Supreme Court. (Kyle Chayka.)
• The Day in Art Merch: A Sol Lewitt yarmulke. Awesome.
• A Christian app for viewing art.
• How Facebook and other businesses are using you.
• And why the U.S. should consider a digital privacy law à la Europe.
• Werner Herzog, on interviewing men on death row. God help me, Herzog could be talking about taking out the trash and I’d tune in.
• Vintage Iranian “Barbie” dolls.
• No idea what this is about but give me more: A Turkish Star Trek spoof. (@jmcolberg.)
• Pac Mondrian.

• Thanks to Salon, Jezebel and Mediaite for picking up/linking to my piece on Jennifer Dalton’s installation at the Winkleman Gallery. Interestingly, as Mediaite points out: Jon Stewart’s lady ratio is even worse thus far in 2011. To make up for the inequity, male members of the program should all be required to get bikini waxes — the full back, crack and sack.
• Not as Futuristic as It Looks: Christopher Hawthorne rawks it on this critique of Apple’s proposed new corporate park in Cupertino, which is designed in a not terribly cutting-edge, car-centric suburban style. Brings to mind Lewis Baltz’s photos of Irvine’s office parks from the 1960s and early ‘70s.
• How big money financiers run education “reform.” An incredible, tragic read.
• Lame: Museum of Children’s Art in Oakland cancels Palestinian children’s art show after being pressured by Jewish and other community groups.
• Tumblr to follow: WTF Art History.
• Bootleg movie posters from Ghana. (Thank you, Giovanni.)
• The mysterious, unresolved etymology of “nerd.”
• Things I gotta see at the Smithsonian: A nearly 500-year-old robot from Spain. Whoa.
• The nuances of acquiring new media art. Like purchasing any Apple products, you can buy it, but you can never really own it.
• Plus: is new media art coming of age?
• Stephen Powers love letter to Brooklyn. (The comment about Powers’ choice of font made me snort-laugh.)
• Luna Park’s tour of vintage NYC graffiti.
• And now, I’ve officially seen everything: Graffiti as corporate bonding tool.
• Matthew Barney’s Anus.
• And, best of all, fat tabby cats inserted into famous paintings. YES. (Grazie, Fabrizia.)

This is one of those exhibits that made me exclaim “holy shit” the minute I walked in: for his piece El Mundo en Llamas (The World in Flames), Fernando Bryce has lined the walls of Alexander and Bonin’s ample space in Chelsea with faithful ink recreations of World War II-era newspaper front pages from England, France, the U.S., Germany and Peru. (All are depicted above the fold.) Screaming headlines related to war cover the walls, from floor to ceiling — a stirring chronicle of long-ago news reports on battle advances, defeats, carnage and victory. In between, Bryce has incorporated his renderings of era film posters that he culled from the pages of El Comercio, Peru’s leading daily. (Bryce was born in Peru; he produced El Mundo en Llamas in 2010-11.)

The result is a chronicle of the war that is intensely personal, providing the rare opportunity to view this much-studied global conflagration through a uniquely Latin American lens. Not only are there some interesting historical finds, such as an ad for a 1940s Disney film geared at and incorporating South Americans (see below), the film posters featured — for flicks such as La Sombra del Terror (The Shadow of Terror) and Los Crimenes del Doctor Satán (The Crimes of Doctor Satan) — seem to echo, in exaggerated, graphic form, everything happening in the news. In addition, Bryce’s illustrations are exquisite, turning scenes of war into works of ethereal beauty (such as the image of the Australian soldier, above, from the New York Times). Taken together, the exhibit provides a riveting take on the nature of war, news, propaganda and graphic art. Consider it a must-see.

The show is up through Saturday, at Alexander and Bonin.

Fact and fiction: Bryce’s ink rendering of a New York Times page sits amid movie posters that evoke a 1940s zeitgeist.

Things I want to see really badly: Disney’s Saludos, a Technicolor film with characters and motifs from Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil. (As an aside: here’s a good bit, with video, on Disney’s World War II propaganda.)

Details are faithfully rendered — such as this tiny piece from the Humphrey Bogart film poster, Across the Pacific.

This ad for the Lima and Callao lottery used war imagery to sell tickets. Check out the exploding coins at right. Officially, Peru was neutral during the first years of the war (during which time the country was preoccupied by a border squabble with Ecuador). However, by the time 1942 rolled around and the U.S. joined the war, the country changed its position in support of the Allies.

The French sure have a way with words: “The Nazi beast dies.”

The Crimes of Doctor Satan amid headlines about invasions, sieges and concentration camps.

From the New York Times: Bryce paints an American soldier guarding a group of Germans after their capture.

The artist’s rendering of a front page image of a death camp from a French paper.

A drawing inspired by an atomic bomb test as depicted in El Comercio. By turning these scenes into hand-painted images, Bryce is finding ways to tweak reality. The effect is engrossing.

In the rear room was a separate piece, Das Reich/Aufbau, also from 2010-11. It juxtaposed Bryce’s ink drawings of the Nazi newspaper of record with a German paper produced by refugees in New York.

The installation view.

I am currently cultivating a healthy obsession with crazy works of public art in Peru. (See my earlier post here.) Which is why I was excited to hear about the work of Peruvian-born photographer Pablo Hare, who has a whole series devoted to some of the most sublime/absurd monuments you have ever laid your eyes on. From top to bottom: a statue of a puma, a tribute to the maca (a type of tuber) in Junín, and a contemporary rendering of the Lord of Sipán, a Moche figure found entombed on the North Coast of Peru (where my family hails from). Hare has captured some absolutely sublime public art ridiculosity. Be sure to click over to view the whole series.

Thanks to Andrés Marroquín Winklemann and Joerg Colberg for the tip.

Not wanting to ever be accused of producing timely coverage on this blog, I wanted to take a minute to ruminate on a video by Miguel Andrade Valdez I saw in Galería Revolver‘s booth at the Armory Show last month. It dovetails perfectly with my current Peru obsession, as well as my continuing interest in supremely absurd public works. In fact, recently, I’ve been immersed in photographer Mario Silva’s book Lords, Pyramids and Replicas: Images from the North Coast of Peru, in which he chronicles the influence of pre-Columbian art in contemporary architecture. If you’re into vernacular everything, his book is an absolutely stunning documentation of blended styles and motifs — from Moche forms to graceful Art Deco to that school of design a friend of mine lovingly refers to as “the South American bizarre.” Plus: it contains a two-page spread on bizarre traffic circle sculptures in northern Peru.

Which brings me right back around to the Armory: Andrade Valdez’s video Untitled – Monumento Series is a chaotic, rapid-fire visual compendium of the monuments that occupy Lima’s traffic circles and pedestrian malls. They range from the forgotten to the futurist, the Spanish Mediterranean to the brutal, the Modernist to the I-don’t-know-what. (Check out the weird blue things at about 2:50. They re-emerge later in the video as well.) Interestingly, in looking at all of this, the trapezoid emerges as a very popular shape — perhaps because it’s cheap and easy to construct (and resistant to earthquakes), perhaps because it’s a common motif in pre-Columbian Peruvian architecture. Also popular: brutalism. Of all of the monuments shown, my favorite have to be the bizarre pipe organ thingies, shown in the image above, which appear to be a decorative collaboration between various Soviet bloc architects and the guys in charge of the local water authority.

If you’re into all things design, consider watching Andrade’s video more than once. He has turned up some amazing stuff — a fantastic tribute to all of the things in our landscape we might see but rarely take the time to examine.

Find Miguel Andrade Valdez’s website here. Special thanks to Carlos Díaz at Ojjo for the tip on Mario Silva’s book.